Cruise ships skipping Mexican ports of call

Major cruise operators said yesterday that they will temporarily suspend stops at ports in Mexico because of escalating concerns over the swine flu crisis. Three ships operated by Carnival Corp. – including one that departed San Diego on Sunday and was to visit Ensenada – abruptly skipped scheduled stops in Mexico yesterday.

Later in the day, the Miami-based cruise operator announced that it will expand the Mexican port ban for all voyages departing tomorrow through Monday. Within hours of Carnival's move, rival Royal Caribbean International said it will suspend port calls in Mexico for four ships.

Norwegian Cruise Line also said it will cancel the Norwegian Pearl's final two calls in Mexico this week. Cruise operators have been scrambling in recent days to ease passenger fears and determine the fate of near-term cruises to Mexico. The unusual move to suspend Mexico calls comes on the heels of a recommendation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico.

“Like our guests, we take all health matters seriously,” said Dr. Art Diskin, chief medical officer for Royal Caribbean Cruises. “Although authorities have not raised specific concerns regarding the ports we visit in Mexico, we want to err on the side of caution.” Carnival and Norwegian also issued statements saying caution prompted their decision.

“This is truly something we've never experienced – hurricanes, yes, all kinds of situations come up where itineraries have to be shifted,” said Pam Kressley, president of The Cruise Hound, a Florida cruise travel agency. “But something like this is virgin territory.” Other tourism sectors are grappling with the swine flu fallout as well. Most major airlines have eased restrictions on rebooking flights or waived cancellation fees on routes to Mexico.

Though policies differ, the airlines' flexibility covers flights booked through early May. For instance, AeroMexico, which operates flights out of San Diego to San Jose del Cabo, is allowing passengers traveling to or from Mexico to rebook flights without penalty. Changes must be made by May 15.

Carnival said it is working to substitute canceled Mexico port calls with an alternative port. It is also giving passengers who don't want to sail on a modified cruise the option to reschedule.

Among the cruise ships affected is Carnival's Elation, which departs San Diego on Thursdays and Sundays for three-and four-day cruises that include a stop in Ensenada. The four-day cruise also stops at Catalina Island.

The Elation is now sailing with 2,200 passengers, and yesterday skipped its scheduled daylong visit to Ensenada. Passengers on the four-day cruise, who visited Catalina Island on Monday, were given a $20 ship credit to compensate for the missed port, a Carnival spokeswoman said.

Royal Caribbean International did not respond to questions about whether it will give passengers the option to reschedule.

In a written statement, Royal Caribbean said all but one of its affected ships will either make alternative port calls or spend additional time at sea.

For instance, its Mariner of the Seas, which is scheduled in May to depart from a Los Angeles-area port for four seven-day Mexican Riviera cruises, will now sail a “revised itinerary” that visits Canada and the U.S. West Coast.

Cruise industry experts said passengers who were hoping to sip margaritas in Puerto Vallarta but may have to settle instead for a beer in Seattle don't have many options.

Cruise operators have stringent cancellation policies and are not obligated to refund cruise purchases if changes are made to protect passenger safety, Kressley said.

Kressley said she has fielded several calls from people who have booked upcoming Mexico cruises, and her advice is, “If the ship sails, be on it.”

“I tell passengers that the odds of them contracting swine flu are pretty slim, and the odds of getting anything back from a cruise ship operator if they cancel their trip is pretty slim, too,” Kressley said.

Nor can passengers necessarily count on travel insurance policies to cover altered cruises. Kressley said she received an advisory yesterday from a major travel insurer that it will cover swine flu as a sickness. But trips canceled out of fear of contracting the illness won't be covered.

“Bad news for the Mexican Economy.”

The drug war down there was doing enough damage. Maybe this flu thing has the narco terrorists slowed down a bit.

Mexican Drug Fight Nets 60,000 Suspects

[snip]Friday, May 1, 2009

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities have arrested more than 60,000 people in connection with drug trafficking over the past two years, according to government statistics from a nationwide crackdown that has also led to dramatic increases in violence and allegations of human rights abuse.

Drug trafficking in Mexico employs an estimated 150,000 people, according to U.S. officials, so 60,000 arrests could represent progress in the fight against the cartels.

But the Mexican attorney general’s office said it was unable to disclose how many of the detainees remain in custody or whether they had been charged with crimes related to drug trafficking. In Mexico, it is not unusual for suspects to be arrested, paraded before television cameras but later quietly released without being charged with a crime.

Carlos Flores, a Mexico City-based expert on organized crime, said the government’s inability to account for the detainees suggests a weakness. “Either they are detaining people for whom they cannot effectively articulate a legal basis for the crime they allegedly committed,” Flores said, “or the justice system is so permeated by these criminal organizations that even if their members are detained, they are able to get them out. Both are equally plausible.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043003897.html

Swine Flu: Ill woman is in ICU in West GA hospital
http://www.wtvm.com/Global/story.asp?S=10279275

Thursday, the head of Georgia’s Division of Public Health says the CDC has confirmed the first case in the state, a 30-year-old woman from Kentucky who was hospitalized in the town of LaGrange while visiting west Georgia.

She’d been in Cancun, Mexico, earlier this month.

The woman is in the ICU at West GA Medical in LaGrange, GA showing modest signs and considered seriously ill.

Timeline:

She traveled from Kentucky to Georgia with her 5-year-old daughter by way of car.

Prior to her trip to Georgia she took a leisure trip to Cancun, Mexico with a travel companion from April 17- April 21.

She began to fell ill on April 18th, but she thought it was due to the sun.

April 23: She arrived in Atlanta, GA by way of car.

April 24: She went shopping in Atlanta, GA.

April 25: She went to a wedding rehearsal dinner in LaGrange, GA.

April 26: She attended a wedding and later that day went to the ER voluntarily with family to West Georgia Medical in LaGrange, GA. She was immediately isolated. Officials performed a rapid specimen test , which the CDC received on April 28.

The family and those in her close circle were given anti-viral medications as a precaution.

The CDC and the Georgia Division of Public Health are working together to notify those that were in contact with her at the wedding.

April 30: Confirmed 30 year-old woman who has swine flu is from Warren County, Kentucky.

Notice that in the case above the woman was ambulatory for 8 days, with symptoms, before she went to the hospital. She is now in an ICU. She is 30 years old.

This is the same pattern as reported in Mexico.

NZ suspected swine flu cases rise to 136

May 1, 2009 - 1:42PM
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/nz-suspected-swine-flu-cases-rise-to-136-20090501-aprh.html

The number of suspected cases of swine flu in New Zealand rose to 136 on Friday, the New Zealand government said.

The figure was up 25 from the previous day, while the three confirmed and 13 probable cases of the potentially deadly virus were unchanged from Thursday, New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall told a press conference.

New Zealand became one of the first countries outside North America to detect likely swine flu cases after a school group returned from a trip to Mexico last Saturday.

Twelve of the 16 confirmed and probable swine flu cases were members of the high school group which had been on a three-week Spanish language tour in Mexico.

Officials confirmed on Friday that a passenger who arrived from North America on April 19 had tested positive for influenza A, which is linked to swine flu. He is one of the 13 probable cases.

“We are involved today in an extensive contact-tracing exercise with his place of work,” said Auckland’s top medical official, Julia Peters.

Although the traveller arrived on the 19th, he did not start showing flu symptoms until the 22nd and did not visit his doctor until April 28, when he was put into quarantine with his family.

In Mexico City, a second ‘pandemic’: rumors

Inherently suspicious of government pronouncements, only 19 percent of Mexicans believe official swine flu figures.

By Jonathan Roeder | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 30, 2009 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0430/p06s12-woam.html

Mexico City - Mexico’s capital is not easily rattled: Its 20 million or so residents regularly shrug off crime, corruption, drought, gridlock, overcrowding, and bad air.

But the outbreak of swine flu, which has killed an estimated 176 people nationwide, is different. City residents are staying home in droves, and many are scared and confounded by the virus that has led authorities to close schools, offices, bars, gyms, and commercial establishments, virtually halting daily life for millions.
With clear information hard to come by, rumors are flying. Years of opaque government and corruption scandals have made many Mexicans instinctively skeptical of most official data, but today’s levels of mistrust are noteworthy even for Mexico.

“There’s a lack of activity, and Mexico is all about activity and people being around each other,” said Alán Santoyo, who sells religious trinkets outside a cathedral in the colonial neighborhood of Coyoacan. A sign on the ancient wooden doors read: “No Mass Due To Sanitary Crisis.”

Mr. Santoyo and many others hypothesize the virus was created and hyped by Mexico’s government to distract the population from some bigger scandal being carried out. Others argue the official death toll is being purposely undercounted to prevent alarm from spreading, and fearful patients with mild symptoms are flooding hospitals and clinics.

In a survey this week of 410 Mexico City adults by the Mexican daily newspaper Reforma, 57 percent said they believed the government was underreporting the numbers, while 10 percent said they thought the statistics were being exaggerated. Only 19 percent believed the official figures. Another 14 percent were unsure of what to think.

Gerardo Bravo Escobar, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon who has examined patients with probable cases of swine flu in a Mexico City hospital, says his private practice has been flooded with patients exhibiting minor symptoms that can be a common occurrence in a dusty city with high levels of air pollution.

Others are disregarding Health Ministry recommendations that they wear surgical masks, stay away from congested areas and wash their hands frequently, he says.

“There’s an important percentage of people who are downplaying the problem because they think [the government] is trying to cover up other problems,” Dr. Bravo Escobar says.

“Other people think the opposite, and are going into a state of hysteria because they believe this thing is extremely serious and all or most of the sick patients are going to die,” he adds.

Analysts say President Felipe Calderon’s administration has compounded the problem by releasing only limited and sometimes confusing data about the epidemic.

For example, Health Minister José Àngel Córdova reported last Monday that there were close to 150 probable deaths from swine flu in Mexico, with 20 of the fatalities proved to be caused by the virus.

Since then, the Health Ministry has adopted stricter criteria, {no, those are imposed WHO criteria} so the number of proven fatalities has dropped to eight, even as the number of probable deaths has risen to 176. The shift caused skepticism in the media that has apparently trickled down to the general population.

Further complicating the cloudy picture is the information trickling from state governments, which sometimes appears to conflict with federal statistics and may be judged with different criteria.

Meanwhile, health officials have also been reluctant to release demographic and geographic information on where the outbreaks are occurring.

“The information doesn’t seem to be complete,” says Dan Lund, whose polling firm, Mund Americas, is carrying out a study on Mexicans’ perceptions of the health scare. “We don’t really know the demographics of who’s sick and who’s dead.”

In a session in Mexico’s Senate Wednesday evening, opposition lawmakers blasted Mr. Cordova, accusing him of failing to keep the nation updated on the situation.

“These are overly conservative numbers and they seem to be hiding information,” said left-leaning Sen. Ricardo Monreal, according to Reforma. “This is creating confusion because there’s no clarity; it’s opaque.”

In addition to the perceived lack of information, strict measures closing schools, bars, restaurants (which are only allowed to offer takeout service), and pretty much anywhere people congregate have angered the business community.

“The economic blow is worse than the blow from [swine flu],” says Mario Sánchez Ruiz, president of a national confederation of service, trade, and tourism chambers.

He estimated the closures are causing losses of $36 million a day in the restaurant industry alone, while retailers and supermarkets are also experiencing pain.

Freeper 444Flyer posted this tidbit

“...Most of those in Mexico are dying of Pneumonia which is what happens after the Influenza wrecks their lungs.”
It is interesting to note that in California, 6 out of the 14 “confirmed” cases have required hospitalization for treatment. Because they are being treated they will most likely be fine. What happens when you start to multiply the cases and the waiting rooms and ERs fill? If this thing takes legs and their is a shortage of ventilators? Based on the California stats, nearly half of the people that contracted this thing required hospital treatment. (I know that most likely there are many more unreported cases, but we’ll stick with the official numbers for now. Still, if even 10 to 20 percents of people absolutely NEED treatment for this thing, that is VERY alarming.)

I’ll share a quick story as to why this alarms me. I live in the area that was hit by the California wildfires a couple years ago. Many of the families who were evacuated had someone in them who had asthma. I spoke with one family who had a 5-year-old who desperately needed a nebulizer (a breathing apparatus that treats asthma) and they couldn’t locate one in the area because their was such a demand for them that they ran out locally. By a miracle of God (I mean that) we were able to find one quickly because another family had one on hand they didn’t need. The 5-year-old got the medication he needed into his lungs and they didn’t need to wait and take him to an ER which were already packed with people coping with respiratory problems from the smoke and ash.

Sorry about the long story but to make a point, I have seen how quickly a localized non-lifethreatening emergency situation can quickly overwhelm the medical care. I have witnessed how quickly things become scarce like facial masks which were needed for the smoke and ash. You couldn’t find a mask to save your life if you needed one. They all sold out.

These are the things that have me alarmed for whatever may come of this. Hopefully this epidemic/pandemic will turn out mild. I pray so.

A Pakistani, among those killed by flu
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The INER reported 15 deaths from the epidemic in National Institute of Respiratory Diseases

A Pakistani was the first foreigner to have died in Mexico, the victim of swine influenza. To his family, a group of about eight people, samples were taken for analysis and were given treatment with the antiviral oseltamivir. Sources from the Ministry of Health confirmed the death of Pakistan, which is part of the 20 deceased persons to whom it was found that the contracted swine influenza.

According to data collected by El Universal, Pakistani, which is not provided the name, joined the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER) on April 16.

The Health Department detected its first case of swine influenza and released three days before the April 17 first epidemiological alert for an outbreak of atypical seasonal influenza. The alien died on Sunday April 19. His relatives were summoned to proportional one days after the medication and prevent the spread of the virus. INER in the 15 patients died, one at 11:30 am yesterday by a virus whose name did not clarify the institute’s director, Edgar Mondragon Armijo.

Excerpted

http://pandemicinformationnews.blogspot.com/2009/04/pakistani-among-those-killed-by-flu.html

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